Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallieOpening Statement:
“It was just a great game for us to get back out there. Defensively I thought we were strong in a lot of areas but also some things to work on. Rebounding wise we were not as strong until the second half. We grew a lot as a team rebounding wise in the second half. I loved that Haley (Peters) had 18-21. I love that she is getting used to dealing with higher stat totals and that she is getting used to ripping boards down. I really appreciate the guards chipping in a bit, Chelsea (Gray) with her nine boards, Tricia (Liston) with her nine, Alexis (Jones) with her nine and Sierra (Moore) with her six. We are trying to get everyone ready to do the dirty work and not have it all come from one place. We did turn the ball over too many times. Some of those turnovers I’m ok with because it is just the players getting familiar with each other. There were some beautiful passes from both Chelsea and Alexis. Sometimes a teammate just isn’t ready for the pass and that’s ok. We always want to have 12 or less turnovers and we were way over that.”

On handling the full court press:
“That was good. They played really hard. They didn’t play to the scoreboard either. I thought they were extremely well coached. They continued to trap and do all sorts of interesting things. We experimented with a couple of things, doing what we usually use against the press as well as trying other things. I thought that was extremely helpful for us. The way their guards were really going after it, deflecting passes and being really aggressive. They tried to slow us down by picking up more and our objective was to not allow that to affect our speed. For the most part we did ok but at the same time we got a little ahead of ourselves with all those turnovers.”

On playing with balance:
“I just like for our players to be very free and balanced. The only thing that I ask of our players is that they are balanced. If they are balanced then anything is possible on offense. I know we have to make some athletic, off balance shots. In the general sense, as long as they are balanced and open we want to be out there attacking.”

Duke Junior Chelsea GrayTakeaways from the game:
“I think one thing I have to take away from this is that we have to put two halves together. We were sluggish and loose with the ball and very casual in the first half. In the second half, we were more composed, coaches said we had way too many turnovers, myself included, just needing to make better decisions out there on the court and putting two halves together.”

On turnovers:
“Sometimes we were a little rushed but I’d rather have that because I think we are just trying to find our teammates too much sometimes. It could be just an easy simple pass but we just force it sometimes. We also need to get used to who we are playing with.”

Queens Head Coach Cheryl NixOpening Statement:
“First of all I want to thank Duke University for giving us the opportunity to be here and have this experience. We are happy to be here and play the elite teams in the nation. Obviously, we knew we would be out-manned. Our plan was to come and compete and to represent our program well and I feel like our players fought to the very end. We could’ve had a higher point total obviously, but you know nerves played a lot in that, intimidation there but our kids kept attacking and I’m really proud by the way they represented.”

On her response to the game:
“I’m really pleased that we could force Duke into 28 turnovers. We just wanted to come and do the things that will prepare us for the season. We’re not going to meet as much pressure as we would meet against Duke.”

On key Duke players:
”(Haley) Peters, she just shoots the ball extremely well, we don’t have anybody on our roster who can match up with her size and on the perimeter. (Chelsea) Gray, she’s just so strong one on one, getting to the rim and she finds an open man. I felt like those are two key players that did such a great job. Alexis Jones had some pretty impressive passes and got to the rim. They’re definitely very strong and can put anyone on the floor in any position.”